No Time To Waste With Conservation

A time for new habits: A Russian visitor to Mount Dora was struck that a yard light at the inn there would be left to burn during daylight hours.

He was in this country on an exchange program to learn how American businesses work.

Welcome, sir, to Wasteville.

That story called to mind another - of a Moscow family's coping without the little things we take for granted.

Paper goods barely exist there. The young couple was working hard to potty-train their child at a very early age, but not for the same reason American parents do.

Forget disposable. Their child's diaper (singular) was a long strand of gauze covered by a towel. Each night the mother washed it in the bathtub and ironed it dry.

Toilet paper there, according to the story, has the consistency of waxed paper. There are no such things as paper napkins. Waste in America has become a hot-button issue. And it's about time.

Slowly though, the public is becoming concerned.

Take Mary Trizzino, who cut water consumption at her Fern Park home almost in half - from 19,000 gallons a month to 10,000 gallons. She accomplished most of the savings by cutting the amount of water her family used for showers.

That's a significant savings, an important one. Though rainfall this year is running about a foot above normal, the urgency to conserve is no less. People continue to pour into Florida, and Florida, alas, has only one primary source of water - that trapped beneath its surface. And the level of those waters continues to sag.

Just imagine what would happen if every family in Seminole County would do half as well as the Trizzinos. Recycling some of our resources is another way of curtailing waste, and great strides were made here this year to that end. Aluminum cans, newspapers, glass and some plastics are collected weekly. That helps in two ways; it's not going into the landfill and it is eventually reused.

By the way, come Nov. 1 you can add steel cans - commonly called tin cans - to the items you recycle. Then, Jan. 1, yard trash will no longer go to the landfill. A once-a-week pickup for those desiring the service will start.

Now the big need is better recycling technology so that all those recoverable materials can be used. Those plastic jugs, for example, must be trucked all the way to Ohio for conversion into useful goods.

It's easy to get used to waste, and there is perhaps some pride in that we Americans have so much we can afford to waste. Or can we afford it?